Cancers you probably don't care about: Men's breast cancer

While women fighting breast cancer have the powerful pink ribbon on their side and men promote prostate health with fashionable facial hair,not all cancers garner the same level of public interest. Despite thehorrific effects of some cancer types, few stand up to advocate forthese diseases and little money is spent researching them. KOMONews.comis publishing a week-long series on some of the cancers you may not careabout and the reasons you should.

Survival rates for women with breast cancer are encouraging, but for men the statistics are bleak. Research shows men are typically diagnosed later stage than women, and their mortality rates are 25 percent higher.

Organizations have made efforts to inform the public that men candevelop breast cancer, but excluding them from research and screeningshas put men at a significant disadvantage when fighting the disease.

"We are with men's breast cancer where female breast cancer was 30 years ago," said Dr. VK Gadi,an oncologist specializing in breast cancer at Seattle Cancer CareAlliance. "Compared to the women's version, it's a far more tragiccondition."

Approximately 2,200 men are diagnosed with breast cancer each year inthe United States, making up only 1 percent of breast cancer cases.With so few patients, Gadi said researchers rarely include men inclinical trials, and some therapies have only been approved for women.

While the disease is similar in men and women, there are fewertreatment options for men. The anti-estrogen drug tamoxifen, forexample, is the only hormone drug foundin studies to be effective in men. Many other hormone therapies havebeen effective in treating breast cancer in women, but these have notbeen well-studied in men and are rarely covered by insurers.

"Right of the bat we've cut off one of the most major innovations in breast cancer treatment for men," Gadi said.

Men are also more likely than women to test positive for geneticmutations, but Gadi said insurance companies regularly deny coverage ofthese tests for men.

"We know the rate is likely to be 20 percent," Gadi said. "If wecould test them, we could treat them more precisely and better definethe risk to their families."

While breast cancer in men is rare, Gadi said other cancers that areequally rare get far more research funding, including uncommon blood andpediatric cancers.

"Our greatest innovations often come from the margins," Gadi said."There might be a pearl of wisdom there that teaches us about otherdiseases. Then everybody benefits."

One reason men are often diagnosed later than women is they areexcluded from mammogram screening recommendations. While it's possibleto test a man with a mammogram, Gadi said testing all men would lead toan unacceptable number of false positives.

"They often feel a lump before they have any other way of knowing,"Gadi said. "These cancers are generally larger and more likely to spreadto other parts of the body like the lymph nodes."

That was the case with Herbert Yellin, an Edmonds man who wasdiagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. Despite having a family history ofbreast cancer, Yellin never thought he was at risk for the disease andwas never counseled on preventative measures.

"I was surprised," Yellin said. "We hear a lot about breast cancer in women but not much in respect to men."